Just Another Day
If only it could be like before. Time passes by so quickly, almost like it's fading away. Oneshot. Axel, Roxas, and Xion; set during 358/2 Days.
Disclaimer: I wouldn't be writing fanfiction if I owned Kingdom Hearts.
Roxas has had a long day.
Between traveling to Neverland and Halloween Town, he also went to Agrabah to remove shadow globs. All he wants to do at the end of this mission is to RTC and sleep for the next week – behavior usually unbecoming of him, the steadfast workaholic, and more typical of a certain red-haired fire maniac.
He isn't sure why the Organization's been sending him on increasingly more strenuous missions, but it isn't like his complaining can do anything. So he takes it in stride and does the work without saying a word to Saïx, who always seems to be watching him a little too closely for comfort.
After clearing out the last shadow glob (and wondering why he even bothers because they don't seem to be hurting anything), feeling more tired than he usually does after a hard day's work, he opens a portal to Twilight Town. As routine dictates, he's meeting up with Axel and Xion for a bite before going back to the castle.
Once he enters the sleepy city, feeling rather sleepy himself, he makes his way over to the store where they always buy sea-salt ice cream and hands over some munny. It's an unusually warm day, so he unwraps it as he makes his way to the clock tower, actually stopping his walk to enjoy the taste. A vague part of his brain wonders why he never tires of it, but it just has such an intriguing flavor – he just can't get enough.
As he stands there slowly enjoying his ice cream, he finds himself getting more and more tired. Is it possible for him to fall asleep standing up? Well, there's always a first time for everything …
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Roxas, watch it!" Roxas' eyes snap open to find Axel in front of him, arms spread akimbo as though ready to catch him, and a very concerned-looking Xion runs over with a small bag of ice creams in her hand.
"Oh, Axel. Xion. How's it going?" He rubs his eyes and takes another big bite out of his ice cream.
Axel and Xion exchange a glance before Axel turns to him, narrowing his eyes. "We're doing alright. How about your? What do you think you're doing?" He crosses his arms and frowns.
Roxas doesn't get why Axel looks so annoyed. Or worried. Whatever. "What do you mean? I'm eating ice cream like we do every day."
"No, he means why are you standing in the middle of the road not doing anything?" Xion takes a step towards him. "It looked like you were going to collapse!"
"I did?" Roxas shakes himself to a little to rejuvenate his failing consciousness. "Sorry guys, I'm just really tired. I got sent to three worlds today and I was kind of wondering if I'd be able to fall asleep standing up."
Axel and Xion exchange another glance. Axel looks angry and Xion looks terrified. Before he can say anything about it, though, they both turn to him with smiles on their faces.
"Roxas, you're so stupid. Why would you try to fall asleep in the middle of the road? Go back to the castle, where you have a bed!"
"Man, Roxas, what happened to your brain? Did it shrink so much putting all that effort into fighting Heartless that it fell out of your ears?"
Roxas can't help but smile back, Axel and Xion's odd behavior pushed to the back of his mental filing cabinet. "Geez guys, thanks for the support. I wanted to spend time with you!"
The three of them make their way to the clock tower together, laughing.
It surprises neither Axel nor Xion when Roxas falls asleep during their chat, almost hitting his head on the back edge of the balcony, except for Xion barely grabbing his arm in time to prevent the blow. They decide to just let him sleep for a while before taking him back to the castle; after all, neither of them want to bring him back under Saïx's odious stare or have to sneak Roxas' body past an overly inquisitive Xigbar.
They sit in silence for a few minutes, finishing up their ice cream and listening to Roxas' deep breathing. Xion places her stick on the ground, cradles her head in her arms, and sighs.
Axel doesn't even look at her and stares blandly into the sunset. "You know what this means, don't you?"
Xion's voice is muffled as she speaks into her sleeve. "Of course I do." Her voice breaks a little on the last syllable.
Then their conversation fades to nothing, just like that.
Axel wonders briefly what it would be like if things were different. Not too long ago he sat in the exact same spot, laughing without a care in the world. Spending time with Xion was one of the most natural things in the world. Any silences between them were companionable and comfortable.
But everything changed, and now the future teeters precariously on the choices of the girl sitting next to him. The tension in the air is so thick he swears he could cut it with a butter knife.
Roxas and Xion are his best friends – something he never thought he'd ever have as a Nobody. Somehow they feel so close to him – almost like family. Another unexpected phenomenon.
In the last few months, he's seen Xion change from someone not unlike Roxas to someone who's had more problems to deal with head-on than anyone her age (or whatever age she looked like) should ever have to deal with. Not that Roxas doesn't have his own problems too, but he doesn't know anything about them. Reality is a cruel mistress, and she's chosen Xion as her first victim. After all, Roxas is too naïve to understand and Axel thinks that he never will, even with time. From Castle Oblivion, Sora's never been the brightest bulb on the block, either.
Axel's seen too many weird things in the past year to be entirely comfortable working the Organization. The whole affair seemed so much simpler when he first joined. He wishes he could set things the way they were before.
They sit there for quite a while before Xion finally speaks up. "We should probably head back soon. Saïx is gonna wonder if we all died on our missions."
"Yeah, I don't want to deal with our resident Mother Hen, either." Axel hands his ice cream stick and wrapper to Xion to throw away, and as she runs off to deposit them in a trashcan, he picks up Roxas and slings him over his shoulder not unlike a sack of potatoes. The blond doesn't stir, but continues to snore like there's no tomorrow.
"Xion, we've got to make sure he doesn't eat so much ice cream from now on. He's so freaking heavy." Axel throws her a grin and a wink and opens a portal back to the castle.
All Xion can do is offer him a weak smile (if even that) as she follows him into the darkness.
After dumping Roxas on his bed, she and Axel go back to report to Saïx on the progress on their missions. He raises a lone blue eyebrow when they told him Roxas fell asleep, but otherwise says nothing. Feeling especially uncomfortable around him, Xion practically sprints for Roxas' room immediately after giving her report.
Upon her entrance into the room she sees the wispy movements of some straggling Dusks trying to leave the room undetected, but no matter how much she tries to get them to stay ("Get back in here!" she half yells in a whisper) the damage has been done: they drew on Roxas' sleeping face with markers and decorated him with all sorts of trinkets so that his face now resembles a blond Christmas tree.
She takes the time to remove the baubles and tinsel from his hair and tries to scrub off the makeup as gently as she can without waking him. The whole time, though, he stays sound asleep – she thinks she could've scrubbed his face with all her might and he'd stay asleep.
With the decorations mostly gone, Xion stays in his room under the excuse that she wants to make sure that the Dusks won't do it again (and it is partially valid: taking out all those ornaments twisted into his hair is not a process she wants to repeat). However, she basically just wants to be around when he wakes up from his nap.
An hour later, she takes her dinner in his room and waits for Axel to join her. She looks at Roxas and sighs loudly, her lips mashing into a line, and turns away to face Kingdom Hearts out the window. She isn't sure if it's emitting a warm, comforting glow or rather a creepy, eerie glow.
What can she do about Roxas? Well, she knows the answer to that, but it's not something she can easily walk into without regrets –
"Xi-Xion?" She whips around and sees Roxas sitting up in bed, yawning hugely. "What are you doing here? What happened?"
She smiles at him. "You fell asleep, silly! Right in the middle of ice cream. Thank goodness you were already done with yours. I didn't want to clean up after you if you'd gotten it on yourself."
"Oh. Sorry for the trouble." He swings his legs over the edge of the bed. "Is something wrong? You were sighing really loudly and I woke up."
"Oh, I …" she searches wildly for a semi-decent explanation. "I was just wondering when you'd wake up. You've been out for a few hours now! Totally unresponsive to anything, including the Dusks."
"The Dusks, huh?" Roxas scratches his head and pulls out a golden star from his hair. "I guess that would explain why my head feels like it's been attacked with a bunch of sharp objects."
Axel finds the two of them laughing together when he walks in, carrying a heaping plate of food. "Hey, Sleeping Beauty's finally awake!" He claps Roxas on the back. "What's so funny, you two?"
Xion giggles. "Just another day with the Dusks having too much fun with Roxas being asleep."
Axel nods knowingly. "Never sleep during the daytime when they're scheduled to clean up your rooms." He waves a fork at them emphatically.
"Oh man, I'm so hungry." Roxas stands up. "I'm going to go grab something to eat. I'll be right back!"
Axel watches him go with a half-smile on his face.
Xion looks down at her hands and twists them around. "I wish it didn't have to be like this. I wish we could go back."
Axel's been thinking the same thing, but he never knows what to say to that kind of thought anymore.
This is the first thing I'm posting on my new ffnet account. It's nice to meet you all, I'm nu ABO (say it like "new" and then the letters A, B, and O). Also, this is the first one-shot I've ever written. Tell me what you guys think! Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I'd love to write a full-fledged KH story over the summer (probably not a canon story, I'm a sucker for high school AU stories) so I'm trying to work on my characterization. I changed the tenses up a lot from first writing to the final product so I think it might be a little awkward. I actually have no idea where this came from and it's pretty random.
The bit about the Dusks drawing on Roxas' face is taken from the 358/2 Days manga. I thought it was cute ;_;b Also I have no idea if they eat dinner in the castle (do they eat at all?) but whatevs. If you couldn't tell this is nearing the end of the game (I have no idea what day exactly, I literally just brain dumped and can't remember everything exactly), when Xion is getting stronger than Roxas. I don't actually have a specific day in mind … think of it as one of those 358 days that we never get to play.
Thanks for reading! Please review! :)